Sunday, August 20, 2017

A funny Czech reaction to the anti-Confederate cultural genocide in the U.S.

Most Czech pundits and media are surprised by the neo-Marxist habit of tearing down of the Confederate statues in recent days. Iconoclasm is something that we remember well from the Nazi era and the communist era – and indeed, from the post-communist era, too. The far left is trying to rewrite the history and frame the U.S. president as a Ku-Klux-Klan boss of a sort and all these things are just bizarre.

Let me pick a text by George X. Doležal – who is paid for somewhat funny, somewhat provocative works in Reflex, a mainstream journal.

After a mass demolition of the statues of the national heroes from the Confederate era which took place in the U.S. in recent days, this remarkable neo-Marxist happening could become a European habit, too. At least the Czech Republic should get inspired by the U.S. authorities and start to remove the statues of the great Czechs who must be disavowed today, in the name of the political correctness.

Every time I walk on the Charles bridge and I am passing by its Old Town side, I am shaken, repelled, offended, scandalized, and disgusted by the pompous and fascizing anti-Semitism that the citizens of Prague are expressing by their tolerance of the statue of Charles IV [the most admired Czech king and Holy Roman Emperor] who is standing (more precisely, sitting) near the Charles bridge. And, of course, by their continued habit to use a name for the bridge that is so outdated, currently unacceptable, and offensive – the name of the renowned anti-Semite Charles IV.

During the tenure of this uncritically worshiped Jews' hangman, plague arrived to Europe. It was raging especially in Germany and the local population over there accused the Jews of its spreading. Consequently, the councilmen in Nuremberg signed a pact with Charles IV that if the local Jews will be "eradicated or if they leave the city", their houses and assets will be assigned to the municipal authorities. Charles IV undoubtedly anticipated that plunderging pogroms would take place but he allowed the people of Nuremberg to beat their Jews, anyway. On December 5th, 1349, the people of Nuremberg murdered 560 Jews who had lived in the city – as a preparation for the Holocaust. Most of them were burned or beaten to death. Similarly, Charles IV allowed the citizens of Frankfurt an Main to confiscate the assets of the beaten Jews, so on July 15th, 1349, a pogrom took place there, too. Those pogroms were followed by one in Cheb/Eger, a Western Bohemian town, whose organizers were pardoned by Charles IV.

It is absolutely unacceptable that a renowned anti-Semite has a statue somewhere in Central Europe in 2017. It may be true that this racist was one of the most important figures of the Czech statehood. But that is no excuse! Our duty is to look at the historical characters without the pink glasses of prejudices and nationalist stereotypes, through a new perspective that takes the currently respected moral norms and civic freedoms into account.

That's why I am urging the City Hall of the Capital City of Prague to immediately remove the statue of this disgusting anti-Semite, before it will be done by an outraged, offended mob, and place a different statue on the pedestal. What could be a statue that would agree with the moral imperative of our age, a human-rightist, multicultural, and generally acceptable statue? It must be a statue of a transsexual Muslim vegan.